You’ve written your mobile app. It’s deployed to an app store. But how much time did you spend improving the quality of your app? Mobile users have a low tolerance for faults. 79 percent of mobile users will only retry an app once or twice if it fails to work the first time . The quality of your mobile app will go a long way to determining the success of your app. Low-quality apps suffer from issues such as frequent crashes, poor... [More]

Tags:  mobile-applications rational application-development mobile-app-development mobile-application-develo... mqa mobile mobile-development application

When I was young and just starting my career one of the key lessons I learned from one of my first mentors was to always look for ways to improve.  Actively look for ways to learn more, and be open to new ideas. At the time this was revolutionary to me because I thought I knew a lot more than other people about certain things; this is one of the drawbacks of youth I guess. But I thought about it, took this advice to heart, and remember it every day. Always look for ways to improve what you do.    When I started playing on a... [More]

Tags:  test systems-engineering ibm-rational joannescouler process develop-test product-development rational grahambleakley engineering

  Industries of all varieties have begun to realize that the target audiences for their business applications have shifted in massive numbers from the use of traditional personal computers, such as desktops and notebooks, to using mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets for accessing the internet and for obtaining the information that they seek. This applies if the intended audience for the application is a direct customer of the enterprise (business-to-consumer apps, or “B2C”), or if the targeted user is an employee or business partner... [More]

Tags:  mobile-development ibm-mobile mobile-application-develo... enterprise-applications native-apps mobile hybrid-apps leigh-williamson enterprise html smartphone

Although I am looking at development lifecycle from the perspective of mobile applications now, it wasn't that long ago that I was the Program Director for IBM Rational Jazz Lifecycle Integration platform. My teams were constantly challenged to iteratively bring new capabilities to market to keep up with the ever-changing landscape of cloud, mobile and social, which are undeniably critical influencers for even the traditional application lifecycle. The value of continuous delivery was never more applicable: use the right tools at the right... [More]

Tags:  change oslc open-source demand mobile devops business-partner susan-peich stephanie-trunzo collaboration pointsource

We’re pleased to announce that Aqua is now available for you to experience!  Try it for yourself here .  As we discussed in my earlier blog , Aqua is IBM’s strategic integration platform to bring you a wealth of Dev & Ops capabilities on the Eclipse Luna platform while you are working with your z/OS systems. Aqua brings a significant improvement in supporting the day-to-day activities of system programmers and application developers, as well as simplifying the deployment and maintenance of our... [More]

The compelling case for application portfolio management For most companies, what would you say is the greatest challenge to achieving innovation? Is it a lack of skill? Imagination? Dedication to success? In our direct experience, confirmed by research we’ve done, it’s none of these things. Across the globe, we find that skilled, imaginative, and dedicated teams are increasingly hampered by limited financial resources. Operational and maintenance expenses consume far too much of the IT budget, so there’s little left to fund initiatives... [More]

Tags:  innovation hayden-lindsey applications per-kroll electronics application-portfolio-man... mike-perrow

Here's a thought exercise for anybody who writes computer code. Imagine that you're working on a two-month task, just like the work that you do all the time. But there's a catch: your boss needs to know how many lines of code you are going to add, change or delete. Your goal is to be correct within 10 percent of the final number of changed lines.    Sounds tough, right? Well, I have to do that before each release of the documentation for a software product. Months before my documentation team's work is finished,... [More]

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We are pleased to announce z Systems Development and Test environment V10.0 (zD&T), the next generation of Rational Development and Test Environment for z Systems (RD&T). zD&T offers flexible, software-based licensing for enterprise clients, and more current z/OS software levels, including z/OS 2.2.  This means no more USB keys are required to improve software quality and enable a DevOps continuous testing best practice.   zD&T gives mainframe development teams relief from typical z System hardware access constraints... [More]

Rethink IT, reinvent business IBM SmartCloud enables a new era of computing Here is something you have probably heard from IBM Rational over the past several years: Innovation in software will differentiate your products and services from the competition, which will improve your organization’s bottom line. We firmly believe this is true, and we have case studies and our own in-the-trenches experience to back it up. The problem is, all the innovative thinking in the world will not do you a bit of good if you cannot deliver that software on time... [More]

Tags:  ibm clm innovation rrc operations platform-as-a-service software-delivery alm development application-lifecycle-man... collaborative-lifecycle-m... rqm it paas smart-cloud devops rtc

  Requirements management What's next for the first, crucial step in successful product development We’ve written many times here about the changing nature of the products and systems that we use in our personal and business lives. The increase in software is the invisible thread that is guiding product innovation and connecting a planet of "intelligent" things. We’ve also talked about the increasing complexity of such products and the challenges that multidisciplinary engineering teams (software, electronic,... [More]

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A Practical Approach to Quality! If your software and systems development team is under 10 people, including coding, testing, and project management, then your projects may not experience huge difficulties associated with traceability -- i.e., the discipline that links requirements to test case and test results. But for larger teams of 30 or more, where even a medium-size project involves 5,000 requirements and 10,000 test cases, the complexity can feel overwhelming. Consider this: If it takes 20 minutes to link the appropriate test... [More]

Tags:  systems-engineering roi risk quality-management it white-paper software moshe-cohen systems requirements development

Today we’re starting a new series called “ A Rational approach to enterprise modernization .” This series is meant to help you and your business to optimize the value of your applications, people, teams and infrastructure. It's based on a thought leadership white paper from Ashok Reddy . Over the past half century, businesses of all types across the globe have made significant investments in software and systems to automate business processes, deliver innovative capabilities, and integrate operations. As technology has evolved, organizations... [More]

Tags:  enterprise-modernization

While waiting to board a flight I met an enthusiastic student, a millennial at that who was leaving the shores to pursue his master’s degree overseas. The conversation started off with the millennial asking me about my destination, hobbies, job etc. and then comes an interesting question “Does IBM make any cool stuff like streaming video, gadgets to stream videos, ….?” My response was “yes we build cool technology that enables all that cool stuff you just mentioned and a lot more than that”.   By this... [More]

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You need a good information model to carry out effective impact analysis. A software impact analysis report usually covers just the requirements for the relevant part of the code and the test used to verify the code. In a model-based paradigm, however, the effect of a change at the software level can be much greater.   A small change at the code level can impact many requirements and model elements, traversing all the way up the requirement and model hierarchy. Therefore, the information model should be consistently applied across all the... [More]

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In what ways is medical device development similar to other product development? If you are in a product development role, you will be very aware of the sorts of challenges you face, including: Increased competition Need to sell into global markets Need to shorten development time and time to market The Rational Solution for Systems and Software Engineering has been produced to help companies to meet these challenges. In this post, I am going to briefly discuss the solution for medical device development that is being built as an extension. In... [More]

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Enterprise Architecture + Project Portfolio Management = Winning What are the strategic goals and objectives of the organization? What products, services, applications are there to support ? Where should the spending of precious resources take place? Where are we going - what are our options and how and when will we get there? These are questions every organization has to ask themselves….if they can be answered you are in a good position! But that is not usually the case… Businesses have, and are still, investing significant amounts in order to... [More]

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On a long journey from Bangalore to Las Vegas, I had quite a few things on my mind as to what I will do in Vegas. But well, I had to constantly remind myself that it was not a holiday but a business trip! I was travelling to Vegas to attend the IBM premier Cloud and Mobile conference- InterConnect 2015 .  It’s IBM’s largest conference with over 20,000 attendees from across the globe covering a wide variety of topics ranging from Hybrid Cloud, Mobile, IoT and Security etc. It was while exploring the InterConnect event’s... [More]

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If you are on a software development team these days, you are feeling the pressure to deliver faster. But you still need to deliver value. And don’t forget – you must keep costs down, too. A tall order! How do teams “deliver at the speed of business?”   Consider this simple analogy… You drive your car to the store or to work every day. You know the path and how long it should take because you’ve done it many times. Can you anticipate the risks you might encounter along the way on any given day? Some,... [More]

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The world is not just getting flatter, it’s getting smarter. And changes in our phone usage can be seen as the archetype of how technology is driving the new smarter planet. The smartness quotient in the phones is no longer driven by hardware (which gets rapidly standardized) but rather by the number of applications that can be accessed with the phone. However developing applications for the diverse platforms such as Android, iOS, Windows Mobile and others, has become a herculean task. These platforms offer endless possibilities for... [More]

Tags:  mobile-applications smartphone agile-development development application-development agile android ios applications

Want to know what IBM Innovate 2014 has to offer? Check out this infographic to see why you can't afford to miss being in sunny Orlando, Florida in June. And be sure to follow @ibminnovate for the latest updates. (Tip: click on infographic to enlarge)

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If you’re heading to IBM Pulse or looking for an excuse to be in the neighbourhood you should sign up for dev@Pulse ! This is a free 2 day event being held at the Hakkasan Nightclub in MGM Grand. Registering gets you access to a free party on Monday evening and Pulse Palooza on Tuesday night.     There are no peds at dev@Pulse, just open tables and short labs to learn about our technology. I’m running a lab that will show how you can code and host a Node.js app completely in a Cloud based environment. The dev platform... [More]

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The world has officially gone mobile. It has done so in ways that we could not even have conceived of only a few years ago. Today, there are more smartphones and tablets sold than all of the PCs in the world put together , and in certain countries mobile devices have replaced cash . They have created a vibrant app economy with almost 500,000 new jobs. And a mobile startup goes from zero to a one billion valuation in less than two years. Mobile development has not been confined to just the individual or consumer market. It has also been a key... [More]

Tags:  apple clm applications ux agile-development android ui neeraj-chandra html5 apps rational native alm greenhat agile mobile-development web cloud mobile hybrid ios

Can government improve or expand services and lower costs at the same time? With nearly 14 million people unemployed and 2.5 million that have given up looking for a job, most agree that government needs to be more efficient and lower costs. But in tough economic times like these, is it really possible for government to improve or expand services while lowering costs?       Is it really possible to "do more with less"?   If you have been around over the last 3 years, chances are you have heard the phrase, "do more with... [More]

Tags:  unemployment smarter-cities services economic-downturn cost efficiency resources government more-with-less gov economy

I am excited to share with you our announcement about new and enhanced solutions from IBM Rational that continue to break down the barriers to innovation. You might be wondering what that means. Well, you’ll be better able to design and deliver software with higher quality and performance than ever before. Let me explain. You’ve already heard me talk about software as the “invisible thread” that weaves innovation through software, products, and services. The thought leaders, practitioners, and analysts that I talk to every day all agree --... [More]

Tags:  "development "rational gm chevy volt lifecycle" software"

Cloud enabled technologies and DevOps is a major growth initiative for IBM, so we’re excited to announce that Pulse 2014 will feature a Cloud Enabled Technologies and DevOps stream as part of the Optimizing IT & Service Management Track . These sessions will showcase how enterprises can drive rapid business innovation leveraging private and hybrid models. Points of emphasis will be private cloud implementations, Software Defined Environments, DevOps across the cloud and the value of Open Standards initiatives such as Open Stack and... [More]

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Walker Royce on Software Econometrics An expert describes a new approach to software project management Imagine you’re lucky enough to take a eight-week tour of Europe. How do you begin making plans? It might be fairly easy to determine your starting point, and where you’ll eventually end the journey. The more you think about it, you’ll certainly imagine a sequence of smaller trips to famous cities, mountains, seaside resorts. But as you scope out the general profile of your tour, would you plan every meal, every evening stroll, every purchase... [More]

Tags:  requirements software-econometrics software-development agile agily neil-ward-dutton walker-royce

We sat down with Alan Brown, IBM Rational CTO for Europe, and asked him about the experiences with customers that drove him to write his new book, “Enterprise Software Delivery: Bringing Agility and Efficiency to the Global Software Supply Chain”, on the CIO summer reading list .   Agile practices are really a key part of the way most organizations are trying to change these days. Agility means more flexibility and provides freedom, but that that kind of flexibility must come with discipline and rigor to give an organization the chance to put... [More]

Tags:  supply-chain delivery alan-brown agility agile software agility-at-scale enterprise-software-deliv... cio

In this smarter world, the complexity of software, products and systems is continually increasing. Innovative functionality has become an important competitive differentiator while quality has become a hygiene factor. Quality has to be considered across the development cycle starting from the concept stage to until end of life or maintenance. A recent IBM white paper examines just how the role of quality assurance has changed and provides best practices to extend Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) to include quality management and improving... [More]

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“IBM Bluemix PaaS provides a first-class application development environment on the cloud.” - Ovum    Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and Agile development practices are both fundamental concepts underlying a DevOps approach.  However, DevOps broadens the scope of ALM and Agile, promoting sustained innovation across the enterprise with participation from stakeholders beyond just the development and operations teams, and embracing lines of business, executives, partners, suppliers and customers.  ... [More]

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